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> who else stands to gain The politicians who ran on being "green" and want to "save" the climate. Meanwhile, I'm pretty sure the rest of us who are sane would

> who else stands to gain The politicians who ran on being "green" and want to "save" the climate. Meanwhile, I'm pretty sure the rest of us who are sane would rather have more public transit or more lanes on the highway with that 90 million.

xg15 5y ago
Even more lanes? The highway already has 10 lanes.
bmitc 5y ago
More lanes on highways has been proven to at best have no effect on traffic and at worst just make traffic worse overall.
- kortilla 5y ago
  No it hasn’t. “Induced demand” is an idiotic phrase for a standard supply and demand curve where the price in this case is just time spent on the road. There is a limited number of people who want to drive on the road at a particular time and if you build to that, there will be no more demand. If you’re not convinced, just look at the empty highways at night. “Building a hospital in our town just caused more hospital visits. Stop building hospitals!”
  - scrose 5y ago
    > “Building a hospital in our town just caused more hospital visits. Stop building hospitals!” People don’t walk into hospitals in 100+ square foot bubble suits for fun > There is a limited number of people who want to drive on the road at a particular time and if you build to that, there will be no more demand. If you’re not convinced, just look at the empty highways at night. Do you realize you just described the importance of recognizing induced demand? If you just ‘build roads to capacity’(and what even is ‘capacity? 0 traffic?), you end up with ‘cities’ that are just miles of parking lots with 10+ parking spaces for every person. You end up with highways that cost literally billions to build, billions to maintain and billions to extend every few years as the new peak amount of cars gets higher.
    - kortilla 5y ago
      > People don’t walk into hospitals in 100+ square foot bubble suits for fun You missed the point or don’t understand what induced demand implies. > Do you realize you just described the importance of recognizing induced demand? “Induced demand” is just supply and demand, there is nothing special. You didn’t understand supply and demand in the first place if you think this isn’t regular supply and demand curves. Make a new passenger train that goes from LA to Vegas that takes 16 hours. Check the ridership. Now make it take 2 hours and check again. Neither train “induced” the demand. It was already there because people travel between the cities (see the flights). People who hide behind “induced demand” as an excuse just don’t want to admit that the demand is already there and they are just NIMBYs who don’t care about lower income people with families who need to commute for work. That’s fine, but at least admit it.
  - a1445c8b 5y ago
    > If you’re not convinced, just look at the empty highways at night. This part threw me off because it seemed to contradict your argument. But I’ll try to get past that. What your saying here is that demand for roads will always be fixed at X cars per minute between 7am to 9am, for example. So if a road between a city and a suburb was built to handle 1.5 * X cars per minute, then there would be no traffic jam between the two places from 7am to 9am. But that’s assuming this new capacity won’t encourage city dwellers to move out into the suburb especially if the latter is cheaper, has more access to greenery, etc. In addition, there could be commuters who, realizing that said road now has greater capacity, will start commuting within the 8am-9am period instead of earlier/later because it’s more convenient. In both cases, wouldn’t that, in effect, be a case of induced demand?

xg15 5y ago

Even more lanes? The highway already has 10 lanes.

bmitc 5y ago

More lanes on highways has been proven to at best have no effect on traffic and at worst just make traffic worse overall.

kortilla 5y ago
No it hasn’t. “Induced demand” is an idiotic phrase for a standard supply and demand curve where the price in this case is just time spent on the road. There is a limited number of people who want to drive on the road at a particular time and if you build to that, there will be no more demand. If you’re not convinced, just look at the empty highways at night. “Building a hospital in our town just caused more hospital visits. Stop building hospitals!”
- scrose 5y ago
  > “Building a hospital in our town just caused more hospital visits. Stop building hospitals!” People don’t walk into hospitals in 100+ square foot bubble suits for fun > There is a limited number of people who want to drive on the road at a particular time and if you build to that, there will be no more demand. If you’re not convinced, just look at the empty highways at night. Do you realize you just described the importance of recognizing induced demand? If you just ‘build roads to capacity’(and what even is ‘capacity? 0 traffic?), you end up with ‘cities’ that are just miles of parking lots with 10+ parking spaces for every person. You end up with highways that cost literally billions to build, billions to maintain and billions to extend every few years as the new peak amount of cars gets higher.
  - kortilla 5y ago
    > People don’t walk into hospitals in 100+ square foot bubble suits for fun You missed the point or don’t understand what induced demand implies. > Do you realize you just described the importance of recognizing induced demand? “Induced demand” is just supply and demand, there is nothing special. You didn’t understand supply and demand in the first place if you think this isn’t regular supply and demand curves. Make a new passenger train that goes from LA to Vegas that takes 16 hours. Check the ridership. Now make it take 2 hours and check again. Neither train “induced” the demand. It was already there because people travel between the cities (see the flights). People who hide behind “induced demand” as an excuse just don’t want to admit that the demand is already there and they are just NIMBYs who don’t care about lower income people with families who need to commute for work. That’s fine, but at least admit it.
- a1445c8b 5y ago
  > If you’re not convinced, just look at the empty highways at night. This part threw me off because it seemed to contradict your argument. But I’ll try to get past that. What your saying here is that demand for roads will always be fixed at X cars per minute between 7am to 9am, for example. So if a road between a city and a suburb was built to handle 1.5 * X cars per minute, then there would be no traffic jam between the two places from 7am to 9am. But that’s assuming this new capacity won’t encourage city dwellers to move out into the suburb especially if the latter is cheaper, has more access to greenery, etc. In addition, there could be commuters who, realizing that said road now has greater capacity, will start commuting within the 8am-9am period instead of earlier/later because it’s more convenient. In both cases, wouldn’t that, in effect, be a case of induced demand?